8:50 a.m.
IUFRO – Research Group “Forest History and Traditional Knowledge”
Call for papers
“Cultural values and traditional knowledge in the context of global change”
IUFRO Division 9 Conference
Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, 8-10 May 2012
During the IUFRO World Congress in Seoul, Korea in August 2010, the Research Group on
Forest History expanded its scope by creating two new Working Parties to continue the work
of the IUFRO Task Force on Traditional Forest Knowledge (2005-10). This conference will
be the first meeting of our new Research Group.
Forest and agricultural landscape management practices of local communities based on their
traditional knowledge offer insights into principles and approaches that may be effective
in coping with, and adapting to, climate change in the years ahead. Efforts to mitigate
and adapt to climate change, however, have not yet given adequate attention either to the
forest-related knowledge and practices of traditional communities, or to the interests,
needs and rights of local communities in the formulation of policies and programmes to
combat climate change.
The new draft of the European Common Agricultural Policies 2014-20, promoting the
diversification, rural practices characterized by lower greenhouse gas emissions, and
the conservation of traditional landscapes, has clear potential for recovery of
traditional knowledge and their landscapes in Europe. However, there is the need to
develop appropriate planning tools for integrating environment and landscape into rural
policies taking into account the cultural identity . At the global level the
development of agreement between the Research Group 9.03.00 and the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to expand the FAO project on rural heritage
systems to include forest and woodlands, as well as the work of UNESCO on biocultural
and immaterial heritage, present new research fields and challenges that need to be
explored. For forestry and foresters this will require approaches for integrating
natural and cultural values in a new paradigm that bridges the gap between nature and
society, both in research and in development policies, and improving the uneasy
relationship between, traditional knowledge and formal forest science. This new
perspective seems particularly needed especially in view of the 20th anniversary of the
Rio Declaration on environment and development and the need for a revised post-2012
strategy for meeting global environmental and sustainable development goals that pays
greater attention to cultural values.
Topics to be considered for the meeting: traditional knowledge, planning and management,
history, rural and forest policy, biodiversity, socieconomic development, monitoring..
Submission of Abstracts: An abstract of approximately 500 words may be submitted to the
session organizing committee c/o Dott. Valentina Marinai, landscape(a)unifi.it. Please
include the full name of authors, their affiliations and e-mail address. The deadline for
abstract submission is February 15th.
The papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in the
international journal “Global Environment”, while the new book series on environmental
history by Springer Verlag may publish the proceedings of the meeting.
For more information on the IUFRO Division 9 Conference, please see
http://www.iufro.org/download/file/7245/4677/all-division9-sarajevo12-1st-a…
.